NATO’s Secretary General yesterday assured that the Atlantic Alliance “will remain vigilant” after Poland reported that “everything indicates” that a Russian missile crossed part of its territory on Friday morning, the day Moscow carried out its largest ever attack . in Ukraine since the invasion began on February 24, 2022.
“I spoke to the president [polaco] Andrzej Duda on the rocket incident in Poland. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization stands in solidarity with this valuable ally of ours, is monitoring the situation and we will remain in touch as the facts become known. NATO will remain vigilant,” wrote Jens Stoltenberg on the social network X.
The Polish Armed Forces reported that an unidentified object entered the country’s airspace yesterday morning, towards Ukraine, and disappeared from radars, and that it was believed to be a Russian missile. “Everything indicates that a Russian missile entered Polish airspace. It was tracked by us on radars and left the airspace. We have received confirmation of this on radars and from allies” in NATO, said the head of the Polish Armed Forces, General Wieslaw Kukula.
According to Polish authorities, the missile entered the airspace about 40 kilometers and exited in less than three minutes. At the time of writing, Moscow had not commented on this incident.
It should be recalled that in November 2022, a Ukrainian missile fell in the Polish village of Przewodow, about six kilometers from the border with Ukraine, killing two civilians. The explosion occurred at a time when Russia was carrying out massive attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure across the country, and until the source was identified, the missile crash in the Polish village raised fears that NATO would be drawn into the conflict.
Yesterday, Russia carried out what is believed to be the largest attack since it invaded Ukraine almost two years ago, killing at least 30 civilians and wounding 132, according to a preliminary report.
Moscow launched 122 missiles and 36 drones against targets across Ukraine in an attack that lasted 18 hours, with the Russian Defense Ministry claiming to have hit “all planned targets”. Kiev says its air defense forces managed to shoot down 27 drones and 87 cruise missiles.
As for the targets, fragments of several intercepted rockets landed in four districts in the Ukrainian capital, killing three people and injuring 28. In Dnipro, six people were killed and 28 injured, including a one-and-a-half-year-old child, and a shopping center was hit by a rocket. The cities of Zaporizhia, Odessa, Kharkov, Lviv and Konotop were also hit by Russian attacks.
The Secretary of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine vowed that Ukrainians will fight until they defeat Russia and warned that these attacks have increased hatred against Russians in the country. “We will fight as long as necessary. Russia must die,” said Alexei Danilov. “We will respond definitively to the terrorists for their attacks. And we will fight to guarantee the security of our country, of all cities, of our entire people,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
with agencies
Source: DN
